There's a story in my veins, with scars on every page

[notathreat]

WHO: Ellie & OPEN
WHAT: Rifting in less-than-gracefully, a rogue explosion or two, & initial trouble accomplished
WHEN: Arrival and during the first week after.
WHERE: The Hinterlands, The Gallows
NOTES: So much swearing holy shit.

[Arrival.]

The worst part about lucid dreaming is when shit gets a little too real. Especially when it's not the usual kind of horrible. So when Ellie goes from another nightmare about things hunting her in an endless horrible sewer to being sucked into the water, hurtling down through the rain-soaked Seattle depths, she tries to tell herself that she can breathe underwater. She opens her mouth and tries, and the foul water fills her throat-

And she launches out, along with a gush of Seattle sewer water, hits a hillside and goes tumbling.

... and it's steep enough that she keeps going.

Ellie coughs, chokes, tries to scream, and unleashes a garbled stream of hacking, choking profanity.

Maybe you're the unlucky person on the trail she happens to literally bowl into (and possibly take out).

Or maybe you're the one who finds her screaming back into the face of a despair demon, soaked in foul-smelling sewer water, having just hurled a piece of rock shaped suspiciously like a revolver into its face.

She absolutely just called the demon a motherfucker.



[Gallows; Quarantine Times]

A bath, a few square meals and a bit of explanation later, Ellie seems far less... feral. She's dressed in local clothing, a tunic, pants and boots, and has stopped acting like a cat, roaming the stairways in the towers and popping up unexpectedly in places people didn't see her enter.

She shows up near the top of one of the towers, tucked into a window, looking down at the courtyard below.

"... so I heard there were actual griffons roosting up here. Is it true?"


[ooc; HMU if you want a custom starter!]

Comments

[notathreat]

Ellie's brow furrows -- she stepped in something, but she's not exactly sure what, not yet, but.

"I haven't. Heard anything, I mean. But you're telling me you live in a tower with griffons at the top and you're not even a little curious?"

She swings her legs forward, so they both hang inside, and leans forward to frown at him.

"Have you seen them at all?"

[murderbaby]

"I'm not particularly curious what sort of meal I would make for them, no." Mhavos says, eyes lingering toward the window. "I am also not eager to find myself in the presence of dragon, drake, or dracolisk."

[notathreat]

"That's fair," Ell concedes, following his gaze out towards the window, glancing past her shoulder, as if they might see something flying past. No such luck.

"But if the griffons actually ate people, they wouldn't have them in the tower." Ellie pauses a second, considering, and then gives Mhavos a searching glance. She is new to this world, these gallows. Demons and dragons exist.

"... I mean. I figure. Or if they do, they just feed them the assholes."

[murderbaby]

The bluntness of her humor surprises the shadow of a laugh out of him, more seen than heard. "I appreciate your assumption that I am in any way being rational about this. No, Griffon's aren't man-eaters, but as you may have noticed, I am very small."

And it is good to be thought meek.

[notathreat]

Even if it's not a full-on laugh, it's a start, and Ellie gives him a quick, sharp little smile back, her eyes softening.

"Maybe if you do run across one it'll decide it's not worth it to mess with you."

[murderbaby]

"Please." Slowly, he slowly spreads his free arm, careful to keep the books balanced in his other, to gesture to the whole of himself. "I am meal-sized."

It's a very dry joke, but that's his style, to cautiously and carefully feel out the hollowed shape of friendship.

[notathreat]

Ellie snorts aloud before she can stop herself, her eyes gleaming with the laughter she's holding back. It feels good. Feels like the first shot of normalcy she's had in a while.

"Depends on how big the griffon is," she quips back, sliding off the ledge of the window, and holding out her hand in an offer.

"Want some help with carrying those?"

[murderbaby]

He nods his head in a small, thankful dip, before handing some of the books over. They are mostly philosophical treatises with similarly convoluted titles. "Thank you. Am I correct-- I have seen you about the library before?"

[notathreat]

Ellie takes them easily, balancing them against her chest, curiously looking down at the titles. They're far too complicated for her to puzzle out yet, even if she's memorized most of the runes, and she pulls a face at his question, taking a step and making to follow him.

Griffons can always come later, it's not like she's going anywhere until her quarantine is over.

"Yeah, probably," she concedes, without a trace of embarrassment about being caught lurking. "Not that I can read anything yet. Totally different alphabet out here."

She says it with the frustration of someone who would read quite a bit, were she able.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos nods, taking this in. "But you were, at one point, literate? I ask because we have literacy books at our disposal."

And because literacy is rare, though from earlier conversations with a different Rifter, he is hesitant to bring that up all at once. She'd seemed surprised, and Mhavos dislikes characterizing Thedas as backward.

[notathreat]

"Literate in English, yeah." Ellie heaves a sigh -- but then nods, this time eagerly. Books, and especially a library's worth of them, mean she'll be able to figure out almost anything she needs to. She's been spoiled utterly by New Amsterdam, but the library here is a huge leg up from her own world.

"You think I could borrow a few of those?" she asks, perhaps giving away that's also seen him in the library, poring over the pages and keeping an unobtrusive eye on things.

[murderbaby]

"Of course," Mhavos says, wondering what 'English' is. "We have a limited supply, but I'll make sure you're given one. You needn't return it; they were donated by a noblewoman who... never had cause for their use. The intended audience is, of course, children."

Surely she can put the implications of those facts together herself.

[notathreat]

Ellie can, and she does put them together, by the look of somber understanding that crosses her face. She nods once, acknowledging things, used to tragedies.

"Well- I'll take good care of it. Thanks."

And then-

"I'm Ellie."

[murderbaby]

He respects that, an automatic understanding uninterested in gossip. "She wanted them to be used, and so that is my only request."

He makes a few more light-footed steps down the tower's winding corridors. "Mhavos Dalat. A pleasure, Ellie."

[notathreat]

"You too."

Ellie nods back, glances down again at the books in her arms, the titles she can't make out, and tilts her head again to one side.

"So where're you taking these? They for you, or some... commander or something?"

[murderbaby]

"I've work in the libraries," he says softly. And then, with something approaching real emotion (awkwardness), he murmurs, "I was reading these on... a break."

[notathreat]

Tilting her head back at Mhavos, she lifts both eyebrows, surprised that he'd be embarrassed about it.

It kinda endears her to him.

"Hell, once I get back up to speed I'll probably be reading everything I can get my hands on, too. You've got a whole library here." There's no mistaking the wonder in her voice; it's clearly a privilege, from her perspective.

"What're these about?"

[murderbaby]

He can appreciate that. While not knowing the Ellie's past, there are plenty of places in the world without libraries, and plenty of people whose minds wish to extend further. In that regard, Mhavos is very lucky for his past.

To answer her question, Mhavos mumbles the word in Orlesian before remembering how to pronounce the Trade equivalent aloud. "Epistemology." His accent is still rather thick on this one and only word. "The philosophy of knowledge. What we know, and how we know it. Rather boring stuff, I'm sure."

Just... not to him.

[notathreat]

Good thing he translates; between the thick Orlesian accent on that one word, and the way she doesn't recognize it immediately, Ellie honestly doesn't know whether it's a word with no translation, native to this land, or something that Joel would've called a "four-dollar word".

"Sounds like it," she admits, a little bluntly. "But I guess it depends on the writer. Like poems can really suck, but some stick with you?"

This scarred-up, freckled girl with missing fingers doesn't look like she might appreciate poetry, but everyone's got their secrets.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos rarely bothers himself much with appearances. People are often completely oblique to his experience, which is somewhat limited.

"Poetry is a recurring fascination," he admits. "I suppose you've not had much time to read Thedas' offerings, but our selection is growing."

Mostly thanks to him.

[notathreat]

"Not yet," she admits with a slight grin, but if he can get her started on primers, she figures she can get caught up once she manages to get the hang of reading. She's never tried to learn something like this before, but how hard could it be?

(She tries to forget Dina explaining Hebrew.)

"What do you do in the library?" she asks. "Keep track of who's got what?"

[murderbaby]

"Yes," Mhavos says with a shrug, "but that mostly takes care of itself. The hardest part is tracking down books that haven't been signed out."

There have been thefts.

"I also archive, notarize or transcribe materials that need it. I worked as a clerk before this. It's much the same."

[notathreat]

Noted- definitely don't steal from the library. Not if she wants to stay on his good side. She has a feeling he takes all his books very seriously.

That's fair.

"What made you come out here?" she asks, tilting her head. The anchor on her hand is a faint green glow, a written record of why she's inside these walls, but nearly everyone else is an individual mystery. There are more direct war efforts, more important positions than anything she's seen here. With his skills he'd probably be able to get a job anywhere.

Seems like most people are here because they mean to be.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos' expression becomes opaque once more, carefully expressionless. "The Lady who owned my employment contract used it to pay a gambling debt in Kirkwall. As such arrangements are... frowned upon, here, the contract was ended. I joined Riftwatch in thanks, as the winning gamblers were part of the organization."

[notathreat]

Puzzled, Ellie glances up at him. It's an unfamiliar arrangement to her, an employment contract, and she's more familiar with community work assignments, or a free market. In her experience, though, you can't gamble away someone's employment to somebody else.

"An arrangement like-"

It hits, suddenly. The understanding. Leaves her feeling cold, a shiver of something down to her fingers and toes, leaving behind a tingling. She feels faintly sick.

"Oh. Fuck."